Things to do in London this weekend

Tired of merely listening to your favourite podcast hosts yabbering away? Now you can watch them at it IRL at London Podcast Festival, which is hosting some of the best podcasting talents from the UK and US live at Kings Place. This year get a front seat at plenty of big shows in the audio world, including Like Minded Friends with Tom Allen & Suzi Ruffell, Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, Beef and Dairy Network and Drunk Huns Solving Ghosts. Your ears are in for a treat.

Lyle’s isn’t like other Michelin star restaurants. There are neither bells or whistles at this brazenly industrial warehouse space – not even tablecloths. What you will find is utterly heroic British food. Opened by James Lowe in 2014, the chef’s history as head chef at St John Bread & Wine seeps from every surface and into the razorsharp dedication to sourcing the best-of-the-best seasonal produce and plating it up with less of a flourish, and more of a nonchalant shrug. An eight course tasting menu (£119 a head), is delivered with charm and care but also an expectation that this is how everything could be if only people gave enough of a damn. As an icon of the new wave of British dining greats, Lyle’s is very, very hard to beat.

Banksy is back, and what better way to celebrate his return than a visit to the brand-new 1,300 square metre space in Soho and see the iconic pieces that brought the anonymous artist international acclaim. Enjoy the ‘Girl With Balloon’, ‘Flower Thrower’ and ‘Rude Copper’ alongside unique works, including hand-drawn sketches and personal artworks, which Banksy created for friends, colleagues and lovers.

Get tickets to 'The Art of Banksy' exhibition from £11.95, onluy through Time Out Offers.

This music fest, fast becoming a much-loved regular on the London scene, celebrates the best in South Asian music, film, art and more. This year it’s taking over The Cause with over 30 DJs and live acts across six stages. There’ll also be terrace parties and installations of both the AV and art kind. The line up includes esteemed DJ and producer Mighty Zaf, and DJ and creator of South Asian creative collective The Beatriarchy Gracie T, plus many, many more. 

Step into Atelier Coupette, Soho’s charming French bistro located at 9 Moor Street. Renowned for its artisanal cocktails and French-inspired tapas, Atelier Coupette offers an atmosphere that whisks you straight to the streets of Paris. Delight in a three-course meal or enjoy a £17 discount when you pair your dining experience with three bespoke cocktails. Perfectly positioned near the Palace, Prince Edward, and Shaftesbury Theatres, it’s an ideal pre-theatre dining destination.

Savour culinary artistry with fresh, locally-sourced ingredients transformed into exquisite dishes and innovative cocktails at Atelier Coupette Soho for £29, only through Time Out Offers.

London’s spectacular free outdoor Greenwich + Docklands International Festival finishes its 2024 run this week with a bang. Look out for a street roller skate show ‘Wheels and Cello’ (Sep 5-6), physical theatre performance ‘From Here On’ created by world-renowned theatre companies Good Chance and Gecko (Sep 6 & 8), a celebration of London’s watery main artery – ‘A Ballad of Thamesmeade’ (Sep 6 & 7) and a day of outdoor dance in Stratford (Sep 7). 

Next to Umberto D., Chinese director Guan Hu may just have made the enduring masterpiece of man-and-dog movies in this soul-filling homecoming odyssey set on the windswept fringes of the Gobi Desert. Taiwanese heartthrob Eddie Peng plays brooding, shaven-headed ex-rock star and stunt biker called Lang. He returns to his remote hometown after a stint in prison for manslaughter. The town hangs under a cloud of its own: this is the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the populace is being relocated, and the local packs of stray dogs need to be rounded up. Lang soon signs up to join the hastily assembled dog catching squads, which offers Lang a path to rediscovering his sense of self. Black Dog was the deserved winner for this year’s Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes, the prize for the most innovative, daring work of the festival. You’d be barking to miss it.

Kanishka has launched a brand-new brunch menu focussing on PanIndian food, with a menu embracing the flavours of India’s various regions, from Punjab to Kerala, Kolkata to Delhi and everywhere in between. Kanishka’s skilled kitchen team, led by chef Atul Kochhar, have curated a symphony of new dishes, including Khari paneer tikka, Palak paneer and Chicken tikka pie. And the best bit? You’ll be greeted with a seasonal welcome Kanishka punch cocktail and two hours of bottomless wine or beer. 

Save up to £20 on eight delicious dishes, a main course and a dessert platter at this Mayfair fine dining spot, only at Time Out Offers.

Deptford has always been a hotbed of alternative art and culture – and not much sums up the area’s radical essence than Creekside Festival. This year promises another ear-throbbing smorgasbord of electronic music, with an emphasis on neighbourhood crews, DIY radio and local businesses. For 2024, the line-up is scattered around 15 unique Deptford venues and the music will continue late into the night at the official afterparty at beloved arts venue The Albany.

Finding the perfect hair salon experience can be a tedious task, but nestled in the coveted location at the gateway to sophisticated and creative Charlotte Street is hair haven, Andrew Jose. Save £116 on a luxurious session, including a wash, cut, luxury REVLON EKS conditioning treatment and famous blow-dry that will last from dawn until dusk, done by a highly trained stylist.

Enjoy a luxury wash, cut, REVLON treatment, and blow dry at Andrew Jose for £39, down from £155, only through Time Out Offers.

It’s the final outing for the summer series of this classy boozathon, which takes over Bloomsbury’s Bedford Square Gardens with 20 of the city's best bars all serving up tasty cocktails. Enjoy a complimentary welcome drink on arrival, then start exploring creative concoctions from a star-studded roster of top mixologists. Cafe Pacifico, Courvoisier, Florattica, Hacha, Alma By Sucre and Bourne & Hollingsworth are just a handful of the celebrated London bars on the line-up, while guests will also be able to check out live music, street food, ice carvings, and masterclasses. 

You can contain the whole history of a nation in a tarpaulin. At least, Rheim Alkadhi can. The artist, who grew up in Iraq, uses the sturdy plastic material to recount endless stories of colonial exploitation, capitalist greed and ecological disaster, twisting it into floor-based sculptures or hanging it as filthy canvases. Alkadhi’s point is a powerful one, and it’s when the art is given room to speak that its voice echoes the loudest. See it now, before it closes on Sunday. 

Kreative Crafts Club is bringing you an epic BYOB Rug Tufting Workshop, a hands-on class led by skilled instructors who will provide all the guidance and materials you need to create your very own mini rug masterpiece. Learn the essentials of rug tufting, from setting up your frame to using a rug tufting gun and creating patterns. Whether you’re looking for a unique date activity or just want to try something new, this Rug Tufting Workshop is the perfect choice. And don’t forget to BYOB!

Save £100.50 on this rug tufting experince with Kreative Crafts Club, only through Time Out Offers.

Climb aboard 40 vintage sailing boats and yachts – including the Dunkirk Little Ships, and motorboats from the Bates Starcraft range – usually closed to the public at this annual Classic Boat Festival. There’ll also be a load of family fun, live music, nautical face painting, drop-in canoeing and tasty street food. 

Community-powered street festivals are an essential staple of London summertime and Camden’s celebration of grassroots culture is a must-visit. Partnered with the likes of The Roundhouse, Green Note, Fiddlers Elbow and Camden Open Air Gallery, expect a jam-packed programme of topnotch live music, spoken word, poetry and dance. There’ll also be street art galleries, creative workshops and plenty of delicious local food on offer.

Never ending baskets of delicious dim sum. Need we say more? That means tucking into as many dumplings, rolls and buns as you can scoff down, all expertly put together by a Chinatown restaurant celebrating more than ten years of business. Taiwanese pork buns? Check. Pork and prawn soup dumplings? You betcha. ‘Supreme’ crab meat xiao long bao? Of course! And just to make sure you’re all set, Leong’s Legend is further furnishing your palate with a chilled glass of prosecco. Lovely bubbly.

Get 51% off bottomless dim sum at Leong's Legend only through Time Out Offers or get 

London’s history is rich and sprawling. For every glossy skyscraper, there’s a slew of ancient stories, legends, landmarks and hidden curios dotted through the city that have shaped its DNA. London Heritage Open Days is a celebration of these pockets of antiquity. Over ten days it opens up some of London’s oldest spaces for walks, tours and talks so we can get to know our city better. This year’s programme includes everything from culinary tours of Willesden Jewish Cemetery, nature walks around the ancient Manor Farm House, tours of restored 18th-century houses in Spitalfields and rides on old Route Master buses around south east London. If you thought you knew London, get ready to be surprised.

Southbank Centre Unlimited Festival is programmed and created entirely by disabled and D/deaf artists. The five-day event boasts new commissions, bespoke one-off events and showcases of existing works. This year, highlights include ‘Precarious Moves’, a performance exploring the relationship between women’s bodies and tattooing practices, FlawBored’s Edinburgh Fringe crowd-pleaser ‘It’s A Motherf**king Pleasure’, and the comedy extravaganza ‘Abnormally Funny People – IRL’. 

Every year, London’s famous river gets a whole festival of art installations, performances, and talks devoted to her watery charms, many of which are free to check out. This year’s Totally Thames Festival has scores of events throughout September, all dotted along riverside locations from Richmond to Barking & Dagenham. This week, look out for mudlarking masterclasses, kayacking taster sessions and live performances in the beautiful Crossness Pumping Station. 

There’s an irony that ‘Fiddler On the Roof’ is being revived in the only theatre in London that doesn’t have one. But Jordan Fein’s joyous, then suddenly very sad production is all about uprooting traditions, a production about reinventing a classic musical through small gestures and symbols, rather than radical high concepts. Famously, ‘Fiddler’ was criticised when it premiered in 1964 as ‘shtetl kitsch’. But Fein, who co-directed ‘sexy Oklahoma!’ when it came to London last year, eradicates the kitsch here. Yes it’s funny – Adam Dannheisser’s Tevye still cracks jokes – and yes it’s faithful, but this is a serious production. It’s a thoughtful, hopeful take on the old classic, traditions change.

The Globe’s take on ‘Antony & Cleopatra’ is a landmark for a major theatre, being a full on bilingual English/BSL production, built around a lead performance from deaf performer Nadia Nadarajah as Egyptian queen Cleopatra. It’s a spirited and breezy take on Shakespeare’s oft-dense tragedy. Director Blanche McIntyre creates a typically rambunctious Globe treatment of a classic that’s often handled with kid gloves and Nadarajah is excellent: she plays Cleopatra with her whole body, and her heady physicality and total sense of living in the moment sets the whole stage alight. 

The Arcola Theatre's alt-opera festival Grimeborn returns for its seventeeth year in 2024 and it’s as eclectic as ever, from a gory feminist reworking of Heinrich August Marschner’s nineteenth century opera ‘Der Vampyr’ (Aug 14-17) and the return of Logan Lopez Gonzalez and Eleanor Burke’s Paul Verlaine opera ‘555: Verlaine en Prison’ (Sep 4-7) to ‘Mr Punch at the Opera’ (Aug 21-24) a family-friendly remix of Pergolisa’s ‘La Serva Padrona’.

Peter Kennard is outraged, irate and angry. Because when the British artist and professor of political art looks at the world around him, he sees nothing but injustice, greed, violence and pain. But rather than shouting pointlessly about it, he channels his ire into art. His stark photomontages have been a visual diary of corporate greed and state warfare for decades. Here at the Whitechapel, posters from throughout his career attack nuclear proliferation, the Gulf War, Thatcher, British imperialism, Nato’s involvement in Yugoslavia, privatisation and countless other charged, sensitive, volatile topics. Kennard’s points are clearer, more pointed and powerful than anyone who has come after him. 

Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s three-part study of the state of the nation and what it means to be British is a decade-long project that began its life in 2024 as a ‘microplay’ commissioned by The Guardian in collaboration with the Royal Court. Now it storms into the West End, with three of the original four stories (‘Michael’, “Delroy’ and ‘Closing Time’) being performed in rep this summer (the fourth, ‘Face to Face’, is a film). It spans the Covid and Brexit years, and asks the pertinent and forever timely question of what it means to belong. Back to back, the plays make Dyer and Williams’s analysis of Britain’s complications prick even deeper. Full of rage, love, pride and deep bewilderment, these are stories that are grown authentically on British soil and are desperate for a stage.

Situated on the ground floor of Sea Containers and offering scenic views over the Thames, Lyaness is the pioneering flagship cocktail bar of maverick mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana, aka Mr Lyan. With numerous accolades to its name – including being named as World’s Best Bar in 2022 – it’s an essential visit for any Londoner with even a passing interest in mixology. And there’s no better time to do so than a sunny weekend afternoon, when you can sample its new Perfect Afternoons menu, offering two delicious drinks and two bar snacks for just £30. 

Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart's midlife musical romcom is a goofy love letter to Dolly, a widow who takes a train to Yonkers, fixes everyone else’s romantic problems and eventually her own. And ‘wow, wow, wow, fellas, look at the old girl now, fellas!’ - Imelda Staunton is making herself gloriously seen and heard in Dominic Cooke's lavish revival of ‘Hello, Dolly!’. Cooke's show is a big old-fashioned bells and whistles production with impressive hoofing choreography and the rare pleasure of a real orchestra. It’s a terrific old-fashioned show which audiences love, and it knows it. 

In American director Gordon Greenberg’s charming production of Joseph Stein and Stephen Schwartz’s 1989 musical there’s a lot more to ‘The Baker’s Wife’ than ‘Meadowlark’, its best-known song. For one thing, there’s a whole village in 1930s Provence seemingly addicted to bread. They’re practically salivating by the time the new baker, Amiable (Clive Rowe), arrives. This is followed by gossip about how much younger his wife, Genevieve (Lucie Jones) is. She quickly catches the eye of local heartthrob Dominique (Joaquin Pedro Valdes) and scandal among the sleepy café tables ensues. This particular show benefits from director-of-musicals extraordinaire Greenberg’s in-depth familiarity with it. Crucially, he understands that romance is only one strand of the story and that perhaps the most important ‘character’ is the village itself.

Fancy a jaunt to the seaside but can’t be bothered with the trek outside of London? Head to Walthamstow’s Big Penny Social to soak up the vibes of a classic British beach resort instead. Every weekend until early September, the courtyard of the UK’s largest beer hall will be transformed into ‘Walthamstow-on-Sea’, a lovely little sandy cove where you can soak up some rays on a deck chair, hang out in your own private beach hut, sip draught beers and frozen cocktails served up by the beach bar, and treat yourself to some classic seaside snacks including fish and chips, soft serve and penny sweets. 

It’s all material to Lonnie Holley, everything. Past traumas, trash found on a creek bed, shared histories, scrap metal, the news, old padlocks. All of it can be twisted into new shapes by him. Since the 1970s, he’s been at the forefront of a loose movement of Black American artists from the Deep South exploring the legacies of slavery and everyday injustice that shape their society. The recent work here continues his ongoing fascination with imbuing the scraps of life with meaning and narrative. Holley can tell stories that need telling. He reconstitutes and reconfigures the world around him, and the results feel powerful, necessary and often beautiful.

Polish-born, London-based artist Goshka Macuga has filled Bloomberg’s gallery with vast gleaming stalactites and stalagmites. They erupt from the floor, drip from the ceiling, glistening in pinks and browns and purples and blues. They look like ceramics, but they’re resin-coated foam, dominating the space with their bodily, physical, penile presences. There’s a lot of gloopy geological ceramic-y art out there, but it’s Macuga’s ideas that make this work. The cave as a concept symbolises safety, a metaphorical, prehistoric womb for humanity to crawl back to. 

Modern-day revivals of musicals from the genre’s so-called ‘Golden Age’ can be challenging – caught up, as they often are, in the sexism of their time. ‘Kiss Me, Kate’, which debuted in 1948, is a particularly acute example. But it’s to big shot American director Bartlett Sher’s credit that this major new revival is heavily laced with irony. As Petruchio, Fred (Adrian Dunbar, swapping ‘Line of Duty’ for the chorus line) can’t get his whip (don’t ask) to work and looks stupid; in the climactic scenes, Lilli (played by bona fide Broadway star Stephanie Block) sings ‘I Am Ashamed’ with the kind of knowing wink you could probably see from space. This is all amplified by Michael Yeargan’s gorgeously elaborate set. This is a lush, wittily spectacular production. 

In a warren of concrete bunkers deep beneath the strand, the masters of high end immersive AV art have pulled together some big hits. ‘Reverb’ is a celebration of speakers, drums, beats, songs and noises, of the links between music and art. Four Technics turntables allow you to play looped records by German artist Carsten Nicolai, Jeremy Deller lectures kids on the history of rave, Jenn Nkiru’s traces the history of Detroit techno and Cecilia Bengolea films the convulsive body-popping joy of Jamaican dancehall. It’s a love letter to the power of music, an ear-rattling testament to how sound shapes society, emotion and history.